Tackling the high cost of college

Published 10:31 pm, Wednesday, November 27, 2013

During the last 30 years, the cost of college has increased by a whopping 300 percent.

Some students have assumed huge loans to complete degrees and student debt for college has reached more than $1.1 trillion for 38 million students across the U.S.

For others, the high cost of college has put education out of reach.

Once the U.S. had one of the highest college graduation rates among industrialized nations. Now it's fallen to 12th place.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., is paying back loans for his law degree and saving for college for his children.

He's passionate about Congress taking a bigger role in making college affordable, and he and U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, have introduced a law that aims to do just that.

The Affordable College Costs Empower Student Success Act of 2013 will promote innovation and hold institutions accountable to students and taxpayers, which could reduce costs for students.

"We think it's time for Congress to have a serious conversation about college affordability," Murphy said in a press conference last week.

"We feel the time is right. There has been little discussion about the price of college except the student loan interest rates.

"It's not just the interest, but the principal. We know the proposal may be controversial, but the next higher education reauthorization ... can't be another incremental change."

The cost of college continues to rise and the federal government invests more money than ever before in higher education.

While the federal government reduced the interest rate on student loans, Murphy said that's not enough.

"We want college presidents to wake up every day to think about how they can hold down tuition costs," he said.

"This is one of the biggest middle class issues of our time," Schatz said. "If we're subsidizing higher education with federal dollars, we have a responsibility to incentivize institutions of higher education to be more affordable, provide access to low-income students and deliver quality for students."

The bill would authorize and fund a new evidence-based competitive pilot program to encourage institutions to develop programs that offer high-quality education at lower costs and reduce the time needed for completing a degree.

They would include online courses, competency-based degrees, dual-enrollment programs, and accelerated degrees.

In addition, the bill would create a new commission to recommend accountability standards for all institutions that receive Title IV dollars.

A commission of students, education experts, and stakeholders would be charged with recommending minimum standards that each institution in the U.S. would have to meet to remain eligible for the federal funds.

Those standards would focus on the access that schools provide to low- and middle-income students, as well as their affordability, and value.

The law would reward institutions that do best on these measures with funding to be used for additional need-based aid for students. Those who fell below the standard consistently would be required to improve.

"The objective is to catch the outliers on the negative side and the positive side," Schatz said. "We would provide incentives to institutions that do well in providing access and affordability and disincentives (like penalties) for those doing really badly."

For instance, one goal would be to increase the number of students who finish on time, because that reduces the costs for students.

In addition, there are some on-line programs that do not have the quality they should have to provide a marketable degree.

"This is a structural economic issue," Murphy said.

Increasing college costs increases debt for students, and increasing debt leads to more defaults on loans, which will hurt the economy.